Erica McWilliam

Creativity has become the economic engine of the 21st century. No longer the preserve of creative industries, 'creative capital' - in the form of novel thinking, navigation, interactivity and border-crossing - has become crucial to success and productivity. But are young people being equipped for a work future in which creativity is the defining feature of economic life? In this important book, Erica McWilliam argues that young people's creative capacities are not being properly developed and that education, particularly in Australia, demands a massive pedagogical shift. Using both Australian and overseas examples, McWilliam describes what creative capacities are, why they've become important to our work futures, and what can be done to optimise the creative capacities of young people.

"Pedagogical Pleasures" inquires into pleasure (understood as enjoyment, delight, and/or gratification) as a crucial but neglected aspect of teachers' lives and work. Pleasure is examined as an historically contingent and unstable product of language use, rather than as a spontaneous, personal, and psychological-feeling.- This book is a departure from conventional accounts of pedagogy in "two ways": It is unashamedly about "teachers" rather than "students," and it does not offer any "solution" to pedagogical "problems." Instead, it seeks to extend pedagogical knowledge by inquiring into the sorts of pleasure that are available to teachers at this historical time."

This collection of essays is a genuinely interdisciplinary exploration of the changing relationship of pedagogy, technology, and human beings in contemporary educational and cultural settings. The authors draw upon the most recent theoretical developments in education, the arts, the human body, and technology to interrogate changing pedagogical practices both inside and beyond educational institutions. Their focus on new forms of cultural exchange constitutes a radical re-thinking of the nature of pedagogical events beyond the boundaries of the traditional educational disciplines.